'I really don't know too much at this time, just that I do have cancer and that i will survive it. I have too much to do and 25 years is NOT enough time." -- Wednesday, March 10.
Jessica Weller was 12 the first time she participated in the Run for Women back in the late 1990s. Her family had just moved from Juneau to Anchorage and she entered the popular for-girls-only race with her mom and stepsister.
"I remember there being tons of women, just being surrounded by women," she said. "It was such a cool feeling being part of something so big, and it was all women."
Thus began an unofficial summer tradition for Weller, a 25-year-old Anchorage woman who has entered pretty much every Run for Women since, other than a few she missed while attending college out of state. A few years ago, she coaxed her mother-in-law and sister-in-law to the race -- their first -- after her mother-in-law, Kelly Schnese, was diagnosed with breast cancer, the disease the race benefits.
"It was so much fun to watch them watch everything for the first time," Weller said, "and to write on (a card on) the back of my shirt, 'I'm doing this for Kelly,' and for her to be there."
And then there was last year, when Weller and her mother ran the five-mile course and talked almost the entire way.
"To be able to run and talk the whole way -- it made me think, I guess I really am in shape," Weller said. "That's what really got me running (seriously). I never was an intense runner, but then during the winter I started running a lot indoors. I was training to do the half-marathon this summer."
Part of that training included today's Run for Women, which Weller is doing again. Only when she shows up at Anchorage Football Stadium for the start, she'll be walking the one-mile course instead of running the five-miler. And she'll do so while wearing one of the bright pink caps that designate her as a breast cancer survivor.
Diagnosed in March with a disease that more typically strikes older women -- the American Cancer Society recommends that women begin getting annual mammograms at age 40 -- Weller will be part of a record field of participants, and a record number of survivors, when the race begins this morning at 9.
"There will probably be moments when I'm laughing hysterically and then crying a little bit from all the emotions," she said. "This is so amazing -- to think, holy crap, this is about me too."
RAW EMOTIONS
"(A) few notes they don't tell you about having both breasts chopped off, first your under arms feel so VERY raw and you cant get enough water -- I felt/ feel so dehydrated." -- Wednesday, April 28.
Two days after she was told she had breast cancer, Weller started writing about her experience on a blog.
It's not that she's a wannabe author -- she's a wannabe counselor who works at Standing Together Against Rape as a victim's advocate and will begin a two-year master's degree program in counseling psychology this fall at Alaska Pacific University.
But her first post-diagnosis cell phone bill turned her into a blogger.
"It was over $140 and it's usually $80," Weller said. "People were calling me constantly. And my texting was out of control."
Weller titled the blog "Kicking Cancer's Ass" and has written more than two dozen entries over the last three months. She talks about her treatment, her moods, her outlook, the kindness of strangers, the support of family and some of the things familiar to cancer patients but new to her. "I have begun to loose some hair, in interesting places, if you get what I mean," she wrote recently.
"I've never been a good writer," Weller said, "and I've conveyed that I can't spell and grammar is not my forte."
When she was in school, Weller's writing assignments often came back with notes that they contained too many of her thoughts and feelings.
"So blogging for me is kind of freeing. It's my thoughts -- 100 percent what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling.
"I don't filter it and I really don't edit it too much either. I really want it to come out raw. It's better to talk about it than to hold back. I know it's hard to go to counseling and hard to talk about it, but you feel so much better afterwards, and this is kind of the same thing."
EMBRYOS IN WAITING
"I never imagined having to think about loosing my hair or what chemo would do to 'us' having children. But I have to, I have to think of the future or I will be blindsided again. Planning when or if Tony and I will have to have fertility doctors makes me want to scream. This is NOT how I planned it, I thought a good healthy amount of sex would be how we would have children, NOT a doctor fertilizing me and most likely getting twins." -- Monday, March 29.
Weller had every reason to feel blindsided by her diagnosis. Her big family has no history of breast cancer -- or of any kind of cancer, she said.
Plus she's only 25.
"It's not just unusual for a 25-year-old to have breast cancer, it's rare," said Dr. Denise Farleigh, a diagnostic radiologist at Providence Imaging Center. "Obviously it's not unheard of, but it's very uncommon."
A breast-cancer patient as young as Weller faces challenges older women don't. Weller and her husband, Tony Schnese, haven't started a family yet but have always planned to have children. Now that Weller is getting chemotherapy, there's a chance the drugs being pumped into her body will prevent her from ever getting pregnant.
So in between her double mastectomy and her chemotherapy treatments, Weller and her husband traveled to a Seattle fertility clinic. Embryos made of their eggs and sperm are there now if they ever need them.
"My husband calls it good insurance," Weller said.
At least two doctors have told Weller she's the youngest breast cancer patient they've ever had.
Breast cancer among young women is so rare that, unless there's a family history or some other factor that puts a woman in a high-risk group, mammograms aren't recommended until age 40. Weller learned she had breast cancer because when she got a pap smear earlier this year, her health-care provider also performed a breast examination and found a lump.
SURVIVOR #32
"I am doing much better, I just signed up for the woman's run:) I am number 32- SO i'm thinking I am the 32nd person to sign up as a survivor :) yaaaaa. it feels so good to say that, survivor." -- Saturday, April 24.
Since the beginning, Weller has drawn unlimited support from friends and family. A steady flow of relatives has visited from Juneau and the Lower 48. She figures she has more than 50 blog readers, whose comments keep her spirits up.
And today she'll be part of a Run for Women team that had 43 members, including mom Rocky Plotnick and mother-in-law Kelly, as of Thursday. They're all wearing tutus, Weller said.
The run comes at the end of a rough week during which Weller became so dehydrated she twice had to visit the hospital and each time was fed liquids intravenously for two hours. By Thursday night she was rebounding and looking forward to today's race.
Of the nearly 7,000 women who had entered the race by Friday night, 379 are survivors or sufferers of breast cancer.
"There are numerous young survivors who do the race ever year," said Farleigh, who is a member of the Run for Women's board of directors. "If she's ever going to find a group of her peers, that's the place to find them. They'll be there with their survivor's hats."
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4335.
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By BETH BRAGG
bbragg@adn.com